I had a random idea I wanted to throw out there and see what people think:
Imagine a federated platform that works kind of like Discord, but in the sense of Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, etc.—with different instances hosted by different people.
The twist is that none of the instances would be connected to each other.
Each instance would function like a regular Discord server: channels, chats, roles, and all the usual stuff, but the instances themselves wouldn’t federate with each other.
The interesting part is that these instances could still federate with other platforms—like Mastodon, Lemmy, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops, etc.—just not with each other.
It seems like it could be a way to have smaller, self-contained communities while still integrating with the wider Fediverse in some ways.
My only sticking point is figuring out signup/login mechanics—how would a user navigate multiple isolated instances efficiently without it becoming a nightmare?
Would love to hear thoughts, improvements, or whether anyone thinks this is a terrible idea.
You can federate Matrix using Synapse.
I think if Matrix were easier to deploy, it would have a lot more adoption for this kind of thing. Once Matrix is set up and running, it runs great! Put energy toward improving Matrix deployment (and don’t give me yet another ansible playbook or docker file… it should be as easy to set up on bare metal as forgejo or you’re doin’ it wrong) instead of building something new from scratch.
This idea makes no sense. The reason people use discord instead of forums (other than the slick interface) is that you can find other discord servers (i.e. “forums”) without changing accounts.
It’s called matrix.
XMPP?
